This is a discussion regarding the lack of kicks used in No Hold Bar matches; from the UFC, Pride, Bushido, all the way to King of the Ring. Taekwondo kicks are not being utilized to their fullest potential. The kick boxers/stand-up fighters that employ kicks from taekwondo's arsenal are far and few.

One kick in particular I wanted to start out with is the skip side kick or hop side kick. you see a lot of plain lead leg side kicks and sloppy step through side kicks but you never see any quick skip side kicks.

Now for those of you who do not know what a skip kick is, it requires that you do a small hop forward prior to kicking, the skip or hop is used to close the distance between you and you target. There are many fighters who use skip roundhouse either high or low, even the wrestlers do ugly skip roundhouses, but the side kick requires slightly more skill.

A skip side kick has the power to break ribs, smash the nose and if done with full power it can end the fight. Another kick which is hardly used and when done so it is executed telegraphed that it rarely lands. In fact only a few fighters like Mike Swick and George St. Peire are skilled enough to use it well. This would be the back kick, or spinning back kick for most of you karate guys. Well gotta go, lots more to discuss...

I understand the kick you describe, I am TKD too. However for many they are not coming from backgrounds like TKD and for them to use these types of kicks they would telegraphic too easily for another fighter to move out of the way and counter it. Heck I'm sure like me you train to counter this kick as well ... shoot backwards but preferably to the side and counter with a kick or punch or combination of techniques. A missed kick like this would leave the person open to much worse under MMA rules.

The spinning back kick is awesome especially in the hands of somebody that understands it like GSP or David Loiseau or Ivan Salaverry, all with TKD or Karate backgrounds. However another kick that can leave you exposed and why it is used sparingly.

I think that you will find is that many of the people coming into MMA are not coming from traditional backgrounds such as TKD and the reason why kicks like this are not used much. I however was pleasantly surprised 3 weeks ago when my own Instructor competed for the MFC. At least 2 others on the card were from TKD backgrounds with one coming from a Militich school in Fort McMurray, AB. Though some kicks were used, it is more punching and clinching and takedowns that occurred as that seems to be the basis of this sport. Lots of knees and some elbows, a few high kicks, some low kicks but again mostly punches.

Just going from my Instructor's frame of mind, or what I believe, you find your distance with your hands. Knowing your distance kicks may present themself and that is when you take them but your are more likely to use your hands especially when no resistance presents itself. And for him his opponent knowing he was from a TKD background fully expected him to kick and his idea was to shoot in and catch the kick and so had his hands not in front of his face to protect himself but out to the sides. My Instructor jumped on this opportunity throwing the jab and then the power hand dropping the guy to the ground where in desperation he grabbed for the ankle thus having my Instructor to sprawl with his free leg. Then after deliver several hammer fists open a cut, his opponent let go of the ankle to protect his face only then to have my Instructor move to the side, use the friction grip, roll on to his back while pulling his opponent's back to his chest and then choking him out with the RNC ... all in 45 seconds.

The thing is, you do what presents itself. Fighters knowing you come from a certain background may be scouted a head of time and the fighter will change their fight to how the other fights. Perhaps if my Instructor was striker his hands would have been protecting his face leaving his legs open for kicks. If my Instructor was just a grappler/wrestler then his opponent would have been ready for the clinch up or shoot.

What I do see in MMA is yes, kicks are not used that much. The hands move faster and provide less chance of being unbalanced. I did however see a few guys that did do high kicks land on their butts which can't be good. It comes down to those that can kick will kick when the time is right ... much like GSP does. Those who punch will strike more. Those who grapple/wrestle will do that more. It all stems from their background and those that don't train kicking or at one time did not train full time kicking probably are less likely to do it.

And lets be honest, TKD is not a top sport the world looks to for MMA and probably the opposite. Most MMA guys and the world for that matter look down on TKD though it has many valuable techniques. If I had to start over and was purely going to do MMA I would probably stick with BJJ and boxing first and foremost. I'd sooner or later pick up a kicking art but I'm not sure at that time it would have been TKD, however knowing what TKD is now I certainly would go to the source of the best kicks around ... and that is TKD.

_________________________"IF I COME ... I'M BRINGING THE PAIN WITH ME"

I think another thing is the necessity of precision with some kicks. A MT roundhouse or shin kick, for example, allows the shin to be used if the foot doesn't strike. Many TKD kicks rely on the foot, and often a particular part of the foot for striking, so it is necessary to be precise for the best result.

With this in mind, attempting these kind of kicks against, for example, a wrestler who is trained to spot an opening and jam or shoot in, is very risky.

If we consider in TKD training we are trained to jam in and deliver a counter pnch or kick we can imagine the problems when a wrestler jams in and uses his whole body to bring us down... ouch.

If we don't get full precision it is possible even a slight movement by the opponent can minimalise or reduce the efficacy of the kick and leave us open to their base desires!

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See how well I block your punches with my jaw!!

The reason on the Thai style round kicks are used is because those are the ones less risky. Everything else, especially kicks using the FEET as a striking surface, are simply not going to work as effectively, particularly when takedowns are allowed. You'd have seen them in MMA BY NOW if this wasn't the case.

Kicking in MMA takes an incredible amount of skill to do correctly and not get taken down. This means that you're going to have to throw those kicks in combination with good punching. That's going to be hard to do while using the feet as a striking surface. Kicking with the shin leaves you much closer to your opponent and able to throw that sort of kick after a combination of punching, from which you can "hide" the kick behind. Kicking with the feet requires more distance and is more clearly telegraphed.

While kicks can be powerful, kicking itself is often the weakest strategy. How many times have we seen guys attempt to kick and only get taken down for their efforts? Plus, many kicks tend to work primarily against bad, tired or injured fighters. For self-defense purposes, I'd say leave them in the dojo. And kicks while using the FEET? Forget about it.

I disagree on much that has been said, especially about using kicks for self defense. Lets focus our observations strictly to the UFC since now so many have had a chance to view it and it's fighters.

I personally rarely see someone taken down after throwing a kick. This is why I brought up this subject, also because I am WTF TKD and trained to counter my attacks off of a kick, I see a lot of uskilled kickers in the UFC, just about every round kick is telgraphed and can be countered if the fighters had the right kind of trainnig. Kicing in the UFC and countering off kicks is an untapped resource. Fighters allow there opponenets to throw giant hay maker round kicks to the head and even allow them to do a complete 360 spin afterwards. In my style of TKD that is just totally unacceptable especially in self defense, and I would think these "pro" fighters would immediatly capitalize on a mistake like that. however, I feel it is because of the lack of training in countering kicks. Which is another tool in TKD that is learned.

I mentioned two kicks. The skip side kick and the back kick. Both kicks in WTF TKD use the heel as the striking surface, both of those kicks are linear kicks, if done correctoly there is no telegraph whatsoever.

Dereck while true that many MMA fighters do not come from a traditional MA background that only adds to my point of why TKD kicks are an untapped resource.

And as far as thai kicking. I see more low roundhouses done with the instep rather than the shin. I watch Muay Thai fights as often as I can and I see those bad boys using the shins, but watch a UFc even and what you see are light round kicks due to the fact that these fighters don't seem to condition their shins like thai fighters do. An example can be GSp's last match against Matt Hughes. He must have thrown 10 low round kicks to Matt thigh or shin. All of his kicks were done using his instep. Until he finally went high and caught Hughes with a skip roundhouse. Which is a kick often used, but the skip side kick is not.

Dereck good mentino on David "the Crow" L, and Ivan Salsberry. I would have mentioned them but I didn't know how to spell their names. Those guys are very impressive. They switch from stand up to to ground, perfect examples.

I am not seeing a lot of take downs being down after kicks, what I see is a lot of telegraphed kicks either being blocked or the fighters backing up. Two things that are abad idea versus the skip side and back kick. For now I'm just presenting these two kicks.

Jkogas, you are correct sir, a lot of kicks are effective against tired opponents. To reasons why I think they are rarely used to knock people out with at that point. 1. The stand up fighter is also tired and cannot waist energy on a kick. 2. The stand up fighter is not tired however has very little knowledge on kicks un order to use it to finish the fight.

It is true that galesic rarely uses his feet- which is to be expected, as John says, the shin provides a much more powerful striking area, and ensures you are in range, so that if your opponent moves back you will still catch him with the foot.

Galesic's striking skills are obviously brilliant, and you are right John it does take a lot of skill to be that good. However, it takes about the same amount of skill to be a great wrestler, because everybody else is going to be a good wrestler. Galesic is an example of using striking skill to dominate, rather than wrestling skill.

Look at how Galesic exploits the rules of Cage Rage- unless he knows he can finish the fight on the ground, he tries to stand up again when on the top. Just like a wrestler wants to keep a guy on his back, Galesic wants keep his man on his feet. And when his man stays down, Galesic uses his great kicks and punches to keep his man down. Did you see those axe kicks on the ground? That was a great strategy and seemed to work well, particularly in the pride fight, where he managed to get a pretty dominant position after using it.

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While kicks can be powerful, kicking itself is often the weakest strategy. How many times have we seen guys attempt to kick and only get taken down for their efforts? Plus, many kicks tend to work primarily against bad, tired or injured fighters.

Well, anyone who fights for more than a minute in a MMA ring is going to be tired. Not only that, but kicks are extremely useful against fighters who have just been caught by a punch. That is why you throw kicks in combination. Also, I think these videos showed that even against decent competition(granted not the world's finest) kciks can be used effectively as part of a winning strategy.

I think John, you are under the misapprehension, that a kicker in a MMA ring will, the moment the bell sounds, try and land his best kick. That's like trying to get a standing submission- it's nearly impossible. Instead you have to get your opponent into a position where that strategy is efective. For submissions, the ground is obviously where you want to be, and in a dominant position. For a kick, you need your opponent on the back foot, recovering from another strike, or reacting to a punching combination. In this context, kicking can be very effective.

Is kicking a NECESSARY part of mma? No. But are submissions a necessary part of mma? Again no. Ground and pound has shown us that Submissions are not always necessary for a fighter in order to win matches. Look at it like this- you are always going to need some striking and grappling skills, but some aspects of those skill sets are optional. Kicking is one of those, and it can indeed be very effective if used coreectly.

IMHO, TKD's kicks (especially WTF style) is still kinda new and evolving compare to other martial arts. I think there is a higher tendency for people to stick to well established (widely-accepted, or popular) techniques, like boxing, MT Kick-boxing, or tactics have frequently won repeatly in the past.

Although there are people who experiment with "new" or less-popular techniques, they also need to accept the risk for getting injuries or losing the fights in order to gain insight of how to improve those techinques. However, how many people are willing to pay the risk? And how many people have the ability to gather what their experiment, and refine/improve that technique? It takes a lot of effort, wisdom and intelligence in order to accomplish it.

Since TKD is still evolving, in my opinion TKD's kicks have a lot of potential.

Although there are people who experiment with "new" or less-popular techniques, they also need to accept the risk for getting injuries or losing the fights in order to gain insight of how to improve those techinques. However, how many people are willing to pay the risk?

I think there is a very easy way to experiment wth new techniques- sparring in a NHB environment, what some would call training "alive." It is quite possible to train new techniques and strategies before getting into the MMA ring.

John's argument about there not being any good kickers at the top of mma therefore kicks are not effective in a mma environment, is a strong one. However, I have tried to show that there are indeed some up and coming fighters who are using kicks to good effect, hence my spotlight on Galesic. MMA is an evolving sport, and many martial arts are well behind the game in erms of effective training. When TKD schools, at least those that are not devoted to olympic sparring, begin to train in the same way, we may well see kicks being used far better in MMA, and more importantly, we may see kicks "integrated" into MMA, although I believe it will still be a case of take it or leave it, just as I think submissions are currently.

Looking at it tacticaly not many kicks from TKD will work enough times to warrent their inclusion.In a fight anything can happen and if the oppurtunity arrises then anything can be done in that split second.Yet there are things being done that work against the best fighters in the world.Things that happen often and work and so these are the things that people will train if they want to beat the best.

Looking more at the skip side kick,I dont think it would work well because of the risk of takedowns.Not only after kicking but at any time.The stance you need to take for a NHB fight is more square than for a stand up fight so the lead leg would not be in a good position to pop the kick out....the front leg isnt that further forward than the back leg...not compared to a TKD stance which is more side on some fighters even virtualy side on....and if the kick is learnt whilst in a side on stance its asking lots to do the same kick well from a more square stance.It would take too long fortheleg to reach the target and your giving the opponent your hips...and what about recovery if you miss or he steps back? It wouldbe too vunerable.

A front kick with more hip that turns to a side at the end might be the closest thing to a side kick worth doing in an NHB fight.(more to push them away than strike)

Same for the other kicks.The start position is important.The TKD stance and lack of worry for takedowns makes it ok to use lots of hip rotation and knee chambers and snaps yet for NHB its not good.The kicks become more awkward to do that way because of the stance needed and the lack of time available.Also the body mechanics change and the way to gain power changes.

A thing with martial arts I find is there is lots we WANT to be able to use andfor it to work...its the big question...what works?Yet for NHB or real world it has to be what actualy, truthfully works that is prefered.

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Quote:MMA is an evolving sport, and many martial arts are well behind the game in erms of effective training. When TKD schools, at least those that are not devoted to olympic sparring, begin to train in the same way, we may well see kicks being used far better in MMA, and more importantly, we may see kicks "integrated" into MMA, although I believe it will still be a case of take it or leave it, just as I think submissions are currently.

At the risk of invoking JKogas' wrath, I agree with Supremor. Seeing the quantum leap in kicking talent in the UFC since 1993, I think there will be more (and better) kickers as the sport grows.

_________________________"In case you ever wondered what it's like to be knocked out, it's like waking up from a nightmare only to discover it wasn't a dream." -Forrest Griffin